“Mmm.” A pause. “You didn’t correct her.”
“No.”
“Andrek.”
“Yes”
She turned from the view port. I kept my eyes on the console.
“Thank you,” she said. “For today. All of it.”
“You needed supplies,” I said. “And Pip benefits from the stimulation.”
“That’s not the entire reason you took us, is it?”
I looked at the console. The autopilot’s course was correct. The time was eleven minutes to the house; the journey home proceeding as planned.
“No,” I said. “It’s not.”
She nodded once, but didn’t answer.
I don’t know which of us moved first. One moment, I was by myself; the next her hand rested on the console beside mine, the outer edge of her smallest finger pressed against the outer edge of mine.
Her breath shifted. I watched the stars through the viewscreen, and I did not move my hand, and she did not move hers. Pip slept in the cargo section.
Every cell in my body screamed to touch her.I had not been in this kind of difficulty in a very long time, and I had believed that I would not be in it again.
I looked at her hand next to mine, and made a conscious choice to take her much smaller one in mine, interlacing our fingers.
All too soon, we docked. Pip woke up in the cargo section and began demanding an accounting of what she’d missed. The cabin filled with her sounds and the ordinary chaos of disembarking. Danielle laughed at something Pip did, unbuckled her harness, and the moment in the shuttle between the two of us became the past.
A beautiful family, Sethara had said.
I had not corrected her.
I stood at the window, staring into the night for a long time, replaying the day in my mind. In the next room, Danielle’s voice fell soft and then stopped, and I knew because of the bond Pip had fallen asleep. Danielle would tuck the small blanket around her the way she’d learned Pip preferred, and she would close the door. Then Dani would pause for a moment in the corridor outside my door.
Her footsteps faded, and I turned from the window and went to bed. I lay in the dark and replayed the day in my head. Instead of my hand covering hers on the console, I imagined her hand wrapped around my cock as she took even strokes with her soft palm. My breath came in harsh pants as I stroked my engorged cock, wishing it were Danielle instead of my hand.
Chapter 10
Dani
SleepandIhadreached an impasse.
I lay on my back in the dark for an hour, staring at the ceiling and listening to the particular silence of Andrek’s estate at night. Different from city silence and the white-noise hum of the apartment I’d lived in on Earth. Out here on the frontier, the dark had texture. Things moved in it. The moons threw their double shadows through my window and danced across the floor in overlapping bars.
I’d taken a cold shower, delighted to discover the shower head detached and brought me to orgasm faster than my fingers. Despite the relief I felt from release and from the shower, my body hummed.
At some point I gave up looking at the ceiling and got up.
The corridor was quiet. Through Pip’s closed door I heard the soft sounds of her snoring. Andrek’s door was also closed, butwhen I passed it, I swore I heard him breathing heavily and my name in a whisper.
I went to the kitchen first, out of habit, and stood in front of the cold cabinet for a while before deciding I wanted nothing from it. Then I pulled on the light jacket I’d left on the hook by the door and went outside.
The overlook was a wide stone platform on the eastern edge of the estate’s upper level, bordered by a low wall and open to the sky on three sides. It became one of my favorite places in a quiet, private way.
I stifled a gasp, because standing with his wings spread, but not fully outstretched, stood Andrek.
